What I did confidently grasp from Terranova's standpoint, however, was how the digital economy is divided into older and newer media, where there is a significant difference between work structure in internet and TV. I agree with how TV labor has a more structured, dire force, whereas in the digital network, everyone basically does segments of everything. What I am still unsure of is this collective knowledge, where there is a general standard of intellect that everyone is aware of, but how does this aspect become a part of the capitalist economy?
While reading Anderson's article, the main thoughts that went through my mind involved the role of several free file-sharing sites such as Limewire (although it may be shut down.) I feel the user always had the option to purchase Limewire Pro, but never did because we did not want to have to purchase a premium version of a file sharing program that would eventually give us viruses or slow down our computer. Maybe Anderson's saying everything should be free, but I feel that it is unfair how the individuals who have the higher positions claim to make the most profit, while everyone else suffers. Maybe I just had a hard time understanding this chapter overall, but please try to help me clarify these views if I seem entirely off track.
collective knowledge--really good question. Basic answer: the capitalist economy depends on and participates in the production of this knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that this doesn't necessarily distinguish capitalism from other economic formations. So, you might ask, what's the use of the concept of the general intellect or collective knowledge?
Well, it's a way to designate the shared quality of something that capitalists/libertarians this is individual. Most capitalists (and probably most Americans) thinks of knowledge in terms of the content of an individual mind; this content is then transmitted to other minds via media. For theories of the factory, the idea would be that the capitalist has knowledge of the whole production process and workers have knowledge of their tasks. Correlatively, capitalists have interests that go with their knowledge and workers have interests that go with their knowledge.
In contrast with this view, the Italian autonomists emphasize the general intellect, the overall amount of knowledge in society necessary for that society to be/function as the society it is (say, organizational knowledge, knowledge of how to produce and distribute things, scientific knowledge, etc). This knowledge is produced through our everyday practices of communication and exchange, through "immaterial labor" as opposed to the material labor of workers in a factory.
And, the remarkable thing about the digital economy is that it has found a way to exploit (capitalize, profit from) this knowledge. It quantifies it: how many people like x? and it treats relations and movement themselves as knowledge.
Thank you very much for clarifying :)
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